Of ‘Safe Spaces’ & Rightwing Nutjobs In The Age Of Trumplandia

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

I read Andrew Sullivan’s piece on New York Magazine’s Website today with great interest. He’s a great writer and he always evokes thought. Among the things he touched on was he trend of Social Justice Warriors on college campuses. I’m kind of meh about such things. It seem as though SJW are a made up threat by Rightwing Nutjobs who need something to get upset about.

One thing that does bother me a little bit as moderate liberal is how while on the Right there is a surreal, hysterical and Darwinian death match for the most extreme opinion to win out, on the Left there is an equally corrosive concept known as “safe spaces” meant to prevent people from being “triggered.”

I ran into the concept of safe spaces when I, for about 24 hours, used a would-be Twitter killer known as Mastodon. It seemed like a really cool service at first until Children of The Corn-like I realized that a significant portion of the user base — for whatever reason — wanted the entire service to be a safe space that would prevent them from being triggered.

After it became clear that nothing I did was going to fix the problem, I stopped using the service and never looked back. It is sad that something that we very much need — a Twitter killer — is stymied from development because of such issues. It wouldn’t be such a big deal for me when it came to the service being a safe space if I had some idea what was going to trigger people in the first place. It seemed as though the mere mention of politics was enough to cause people to freak out.

Regardless, the the main problem is these extremes on the Left and Right only make Trumplandia stronger. As I keep saying, we need to engage. We need to cross the divide that things like safe spaces on the Left and the hysteric of the Right are causing.

Sullivan also noted that there is a very real chance that Trumplandia may be the final death blow to the global liberal order that we’ve taken for granted for about 70 years. I don’t know what to say. He definitely has a point and yet because of tribal politics like what I mentioned above, it’s very possible that Trumplandia will not only survive but prosper.